A baseball card hobby blog…

Month: November 2016

Recently I came across a few photos of High Rock Park which was located in Norfolk, VA right near the intersection of Church and 20th Street. Home to Norfolk Tars who were a Piedmont League minor league affiliate to the New York Yankees, the 6,500 seat park was dedicated on July 15th, 1940 in front of a crowd of thousands. The Norfolk Tars would go on to lose that inaugural game to the Richmond Colts in front of a sold out crowd. The name of the park is often questioned in discussion as the location is neither “high” or “rocky”. The park was actually built on a location that is low and sandy. The name “High Rock Park” was actually chosen by the High Rock Bottling Company which paid $1,000 per year for naming rights.

The left field fence butts up against the old Norfolk & Western Railroad tracks. It is said that during an exhibition game, Babe Ruth hit the “longest home run in history” as the ball sailed over the fence and landed in a rolling coal car bound for West Virginia. (It should be noted that several other cities have similar stories involving Ruth, home-runs, and coal cars.)

In 1944, the park sustained massive damage due to a fire and was rebuilt by local dentist and owner of the Tars, Dr. Eddie Myers. Dr. Myers added 1,500 additional seats, changed the name to “Myers Field” and reopened the park which went on to host Norfolk Tar baseball games until 1955.

The Norfolk Tars played mediocre baseball in the 1940’s and never found themselves winning more than one pennant (1945), the Tars did serve as a starting point for a handful of baseball legends. Notably, Yogi Berra, Lew Burdette, Whitey Ford, Bob Porterfield, Chuck Connors, Tom Gorman, and Clint Courtney.

The 1950’s provided better Norfolk Tar baseball and along with a general manager who promoted the team very aggressively, Myers Field was often sold out for home games.

One of his promotions was “swimsuit night” and he put an ad in the Virginia Pilot that the best looking girl would win $100.

Norfolk Tar second baseman Tom Vinditelli would tell the story best.

“On the the night of the swimsuit contest, the fans kept coming and coming. They all wanted to get a look at these girls in swimsuits and we must have had a crowd of over 10,000 people. The only problem was that only one girl had signed up to be in the contest. About an hour before the game, the general manager started to panic and kept saying, ‘What in the hell am I going to do?’ He fretted a little while longer and said, ‘We advertised a swimsuit contest, so we’re going to have a swimsuit contest! I need some volunteers!’

He then hopped in his car, drove over to Sears and came back with a bunch of wigs, bras, ladies’ shorts and shoes in his hands. While he was gone, his wife came down to the dugout and put all sorts of makeup on us. He handed us these get-ups and we got dressed for the contest.

The one girl that actually did sign up for the contest was ‘Miss Norfolk’ and thank goodness for that.
She was a knockout. We let her go out onto the field first and when she came out in a leopard print bathing suit and high-heels, the crowd went nuts. I was next in line and since I’m from Rhode
Island, the announcer announced me as ‘Miss Rhode Island.’ Jim Coates, our big 6’4″ who later played for the Yankees came out as ‘Miss Virginia.’ Bob Rack was ‘Miss Missouri’ and Moe Thacker was ‘Miss Illinois.’

We all looked funny as hell stumbling around in high-heels and bras but the funniest of all was my double-play partner Stan Rosenzweig. Introduced as ‘Miss Brooklyn’, he was short and stocky with hair all over his body that made him look like a little bear out there. He had stuffed two baseballs into his bra and on his way back to the dugout, he took them out, showed them to the crowd, and then put them back in. He then called one of his buddies from the other team and told him to come out onto the field. “Rosey” jumped into that guy’s arms, pulled one of the baseballs out of his bra and said to him, ‘Why don’t you come up and see me sometime big boy?’

The fans all thought this was a riot and what we thought was going to be a flop of a night turned out to be a helluva time!”
Myers Field was torn down in 1955. I recently drove by the location (photo below) and sadly, nothing is left but an empty lot that has probably been a handful of other things in the past 60 years.

It is hard to believe that this is the same spot where a 17 year old Yogi Berra got his start. Struggling defensively behind the plate, Berra went on to hit 7 home runs and knocked in 56 RBI’s in 1943, his lone season with the Tars before moving on to the New York Yankees, 18 All Star Games, 13 World Series rings, and eventually the Hall of Fame.

Note – the Tom Vinditelli story above can be found in Mike Shannon’s book: Tales from the Ballpark. 1999.

“Ralph Branca, beloved Dodger pitcher and the man who courageously stood up to racism with Jackie Robinson, dead at 90”.

At the age of 90 years old, Ralph Branca quietly passed away the day before Thanksgiving in his Rye Brook, New York nursing home yesterday.

I wish more headlines read like the one above. Instead, the majority of them define him as the man who “gave up the ‘shot heard round the world’.

Born on January 6, 1926 in Mount Vernon, New York; Branca was the 15th of 17 children. While attending New York University, Branca was their star pitcher in 1944 and would find himself making his major league debut that summer for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

With the help of a blistering fastball and a curve ball that snapped like a flag in the wind, 1947 would be Branca’s breakout season as he went 21-12. The next season he would compile a record of 14-9 and making it 3 winning seasons in a row, he would top out at 13 wins and only 5 losses in 1949. Branca would make the National League All Star team all three years.

A post about Branca wouldn’t be complete without mention of the fastball he threw to Bobby Thompson on October 3, 1951 at 3:58 P.M..

Bobby Thompson of the New York Giants hits a game-winning home run off of Dodgers’ pitcher Ralph Branca in a playoff game at the Polo Grounds – October 3, 1951, New York (AP)

In the final game with the New York Giants to determine the National League championship, Bobby Thompson lifted a Branca fastball into the left-field bleachers with two men on base in the bottom of the 9th inning. The shot off of Branca secured the National League pennant for the inter-borough rivals.

The “Shot Heard Round the World” is often cited as the most memorable home run in baseball history and sits alongside such baseball memories as Gehrig’s farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, Larsen’s perfect game in a World Series and Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder catch at the Polo Grounds. Americans alive at the time and who possessed any vague interest, could recall with exacting detail where they were when they heard the news.

The same can be said for Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination.

Branca once said, “Nobody remembers that at 21, I won 21 games. Nobody remembers that at 25, I had 75 wins. All they remember is that homer.”

It would later be discovered that the New York Giants had been stealing signs from the Polo Grounds center-field bleachers during the entire 1951 season.

“He absolutely knew that fastball was coming”, Branca would go on to later say about his close friend Thompson.

Thompson denies he had the signs decoded. “Even if you know what’s coming, and I’m not saying I knew what was coming, you still have to hit the damned ball.” he would later say.

Branca enjoyed a 12 year career (1944-1956) and played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944-53, 1956), Detroit Tigers (1953-54), and New York Yankees (1954). His career win-loss record was 88-68, ERA 3.79, and totaled 829 strikeouts.

Ralph and Jackie at the Brooklyn Dodgers office the day Jackie Robinson signed his contract. February 12, 1948

Branca was also an early friend and champion of Jackie Robinson. He was one of the few in the game to great Jackie as an equal from day one.

“Ralph was good to Jack,” Rachel Robinson once said, “when it wasn’t fashionable to be good to Jack.” In 1944, as Robinson broke the color barrier, fellow members of the Dodgers signed a petition protesting Robinson joining the team, Branca courageously refused to sign. In those early years on the road, Branca, unlike many of his teammates, regularly socialized with Jackie Robinson and proudly stood beside him when Robinson first took the field on opening day, April 15, 1947.

Branca grew up in a diverse Mount Vernon neighborhood and his immigrant parents taught him respect and acceptance from an early age. Growing up, Branca had black, Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighbors, friends, and teammates. “Where I lived, on 9th Avenue in Mount Vernon, black families lived right next door to me. They came in my house, I went in theirs,” he says.

While many will choose to remember Branca as merely the losing half in possibly the most famous home run in baseball history, let us not also remember him as a man of unwavering integrity who stood tall in the face of racism.

As we head into Game 6 of this year’s World Series, I knew the Cubs had more to add to this storybook season. The top of the 4th inning has certainly proved that to be the case.

A home run by Bryant in the 1st and now a grand slam by Russell in the top of the 4th has put the Cubs up a cool 7 runs. Because these two teams have never faced each other before in a World Series, the grand slam was the first hit in Cubs World Series history and the first given up by the Indians in their World Series history. I’m sure most will say that putting Cleveland’s Tomlin on the mound with only 3 days rest was a mistake by the manager Francona. Regardless, Francona hasn’t made any mistakes yet in this World Series and I think that Chicago knows they need to flip the switch in this game if they are going to stay alive and make history.

Chicago pitcher Jake Arrieta has cruised through the Cleveland lineup for most of the night and seems to be locked in. Arrieta played his triple-A ball here in Norfolk for the Tides, starting 46 games between 2009 and 2013. Here is a pretty cool clip from our local news channel spotlighting Chris Tillman and Jake Arrieta back in 2009.

They did a pretty cool spotlight on Eddie Robinson who is the last surviving member of the 1948 Cleveland Indians championship team. Robinson played first base and knocked in the winning run in game 6 of that World Series as they went on to defeat the Boston Braves.

In an interview, a reporter referenced how much the game has changed since 1948 and asked Robinson if he ever thinks about how much stars like Bob Feller and Bob Lemon would have gotten paid today.

He calmly said, “No. I only think about how much Eddie Robinson would have gotten paid today.”

Interestingly, Robinson was with the Indians on June 12, 1948 as they played the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Babe Ruth was on hand to help the Yankees celebrate the 25th anniversary of their stadium.

Dying of cancer and struggling to walk, Ruth put on his Yankee pinstripes one last time and slowly made his way up the dugout steps. Seeing that Ruth was weak and struggling to support himself, Robinson handed him one of his bats to use as a crutch. Ruth would die 2 months later.

That bat can be seen here in this photo.

Robinson later had Ruth sign the bat and held on to it for the next 40 years. He called a memorabilia collector in the 1980’s and asked if he was interested in purchasing the bat. Having no idea what the value of the bat would be, Robinson threw an arbitrary number of $10,000 out there as the purchase price. The collector quickly said, “I’ll have the money to you tomorrow.”

The bat has since gone on to sell at auction for over $100,000…twice.

You can purchase Robinson’s autobiography “Lucky Me: My 65 Years in Baseball” here.

In closing, the Cubs are currently leading 7-2 in the top of the 6th.

Trouble With the Curve

Just my place to share some of the cool things I have in my collection and talk baseball.